We Know

by Gregg Hurwitz

  The front door rattled, the ding nearly sending Hacmed through the ceiling tiles. He left me there, stunned, and scurried out to ring up the customer. Then he returned. I hadn't moved. I'd barely breathed.

  It took me a moment to realize that Hacmed was speaking again. "My brother-in-law, they take him for three month. He is cabinetmaker. Nothing more. But they take him, because he is from Pakistan. No lawyer, no nothing. Just gone. Three month. I support my sister and their children. Three month. And then one day he is back. No explanation. They kept him in secret jail, asking questions, feeding him like dog. My brother-in-law is strong man. Homer cannot survive this."

  "They'll have to realize that Homer doesn't know anything."

  "You think my brother-in-law knew anything?" He was practically shouting.

  "No, no. What else did they tell you?"

  "They are going to charge Homer with murder. Murder. They say he kill man in apartment, then lit him on fire, then blew up apartment. They say the bill proves he is involved with dead man. Homer tell them someone else give him the bill. They do not believe him. He has no money to hire proper lawyer. He cannot make bail. They will leave him to rot."

  "Who told you all this?"

  "Secret Service agent came back one hour ago. Told me everything."

  "Broad guy, buzz cut, tan face?"

  "Yes. That is him."

  "Nice of him. To give you all that info."

  Hacmed looked at me unsurely. "What do you mean?"

  "Nothing, sorry. Anything else?"

  "They are processing Homer now. They are to release him into general population tomorrow. First thing. With rapists and killers." Hacmed shook his head, on the verge of tears again.

  Sever had gone to great lengths to make sure I knew that Homer would suffer worse than he already was unless I turned myself in. Either Homer or I was going to be charged with the murder of Mack Jackman. The decision was up to me.

  "You must leave." Hacmed ushered me to the back door. "You must go hide."

  I said, "Hacmed, listen to me. This is not your fault."

  He pulled his head back through the gap and regarded me with mournful eyes. "No? Then whose fault it is?"

  The slab of the high-rise towered over me, black windows framed with white concrete, an imperious honeycomb. I'd left the Jaguar three blocks away in a grocery-store parking lot, keys in the wheel well for Induma. Concrete planters and reinforced trash cans were positioned around the base of the building, measures against unresourceful car bombers.

  Feeling oddly naked without my rucksack, I pulled the cell phone from my pocket and placed a final call.

  Steve's voice answered me gruffly. "I thought I told you only to call me if you were about to get killed."

  "Yeah, well."

  "Shit," he said. The wind blew across my cheeks, the receiver, and then Steve said, "Hello?"

  "I'm here. You make any headway?"

  "I'm hitting the databases every time I can grab a minute, but I have to do this quiet, like I said. Jane Everett's not the most common name, but it's not the most unusual either. A good number of hits so far, none matching the profile or the picture."

  I cleared my throat. "Don't try to reach me. Don't call this number. Wait and I'll contact you. If I can."

  "Listen, Nick, your mother-"

  "If you don't hear from me, tell Callie…"

  "What?"

  "Tell her thanks for believing me."

  I snapped the phone shut before he could say anything else. I set it on the concrete and smashed it with the heel of my shoe. Then I pried out the circuit board and bent it in half and dropped it through a sewer grate. The plastic casing I dumped in a trash can.

  Odds were good that I'd soon become an enemy of the state, with all the attendant privileges. Or one of those anonymous corpses, hidden in a heating duct, discovered weeks later when the weather shifted. Disappeared, but this time for good. Sadly, I felt as if now I had more to lose than ever. So much had changed over the past six days. I had shared my past with Induma and Callie, and that meant I would miss them with more of myself.

  A bus wheezed by on Figueroa, then slowed with a gassy exhale. The nighttime breeze swirled up hot-dog wrappers and a few early leaves. Leaning back on my heels like a rube in Manhattan, I contemplated the commanding building. It all but blocked out the sky.

  I was sweating through my Jesus shirt.

  Before I could lose my nerve, I walked into the lobby. A moderate amount of traffic to and from the elevators, even at this hour. By dint of habit, I put my head down and veered past the reception console. I didn't like signing visitor books, not that any of that would matter anymore. The rent-a-cops, distracted with phones and a shrill woman who'd misplaced a coat, didn't notice me.

  I slid through the closing elevator doors. Thumbing the button for the thirteenth floor, I realized I'd turned away from the rear mirror and the security camera it likely hid. So many habits, stretching back so many years. But this was the end, the time to lay aside Liffman's rule-book and head into the belly of the beast.

  I counted the passing floors, my heart racing, pins and needles in my fingertips. The doors parted and I forced myself out, assailed by the bright fluorescents. At the end of the hall, beside the reception desk, hung the vast crest with its eagle and flag.

  The woman looked up. Behind her was the open squad room, desks arrayed around waist-high partitions. Despite the loosened ties and sloughed suit jackets, the room was the picture of industry. Agents flipped through files, pulled faxes from machines, jabbed fingers at booking photos.

  I kept on toward the receptionist. My palms were slick. I shrank from a passing agent as if he were infectious. The overhead security cameras felt like interrogation lights in my face. Shying from their glare, I reached the desk. Nowhere else to go now. The receptionist, nicely made up like a 1950s front woman, smiled at me expectantly. A few of the agents glanced up from their desks. I was having a hard time getting air.

  "Yes?" she asked.

  A swirl of nausea, like the sickness that accompanied my 2:18 wake-ups, except more vivid under the bright lights. Beyond the partition I recognized the wide shoulders of Reid Sever. He was facing away, bent to scrutinize a document. The strip of white flesh beneath the line of his buzz cut was pronounced.

  "I'm…" My throat froze up. I couldn't get my name out.

  "What, sir?"

  "I… I'm…" My eyes tracked up to Sever. He-and every other agent in the room-was now staring at me. I was completely, pathetically immobilized.

  Sever said, "Nick Horrigan."

  Chapter 38

  "Release Homer now or I won't talk." My arms ached. It didn't help that Sever was steering me by the cuffs, shoving me through one hall after another. Agents and secretaries paused at their monitors and over their cups of coffee to take note.

  "You're not setting the rules," he said, with that soft edge of a Southern accent.

  "That was the deal. You know it and I know it."

  "We don't have a deal."

  "We both know this has got nothing to do with Homer. You used him to get to me. It worked. He's not valuable to you anymore. If you want me to talk, cut the guy a break and let him out before they dump him into general pop."

  Sever didn't slow. We passed a few open office doors, and then the cuffs bit into my wrists, and my shoulders strained in their sockets as I jerked to a halt. I could hear him breathing hard behind me, feel his fist tight around the handcuff chain. Finally he tugged me back, pivoting me around another corner. A few more painful steps and we were outside a double-reinforced door, peering at a guard through ballistic glass.

  Sever leaned close to the embedded microphone and said, "Let him go."

  The guard rolled back from the window on his chair and disappeared. The buzzing of secured doors. A metallic rumble. A moment later Homer was escorted through the door, a guard on either side, white latex gloves gripping him at the biceps. He was trembling, a mountain of shivering rags. His
mouth worked on itself, his beard shifting. He saw me, blanched beneath the dirt, and tried to tell me something but couldn't. The guards moved him past us toward the elevator and shoved him in. The doors slid shut, and the guards walked by again, snapping off their gloves and chuckling to themselves.

  They nodded through the window. The door clicked open, and they disappeared.

  Sever hadn't moved. He said, "What's that bum to you anyway?"

  "A friend."

  "You got some fucked-up habits, Horrigan."

  We were moving again. "Where are you taking me?"

  "Interrogation."

  "I want to talk to Wydell."

  Sever made a noise of severe irritation, and the cuffs sank deeper into my flesh. Another hall, a doorway, past a female agent whose eyes lingered on Sever for an extra beat. I was the piece-of-shit offender, the foil for admirable men with admirable tasks and intentions. My arms pinned behind me, I approached a metal door. Sever didn't slow down. I hit it with my chest, and it banged open. He hurled me inside, and I staggered two steps and fell onto a wooden chair in the middle of the concrete box. The chair tilted up on two legs, then settled back with a clatter. Sever closed the door. Locked it. No security camera. No one-way mirror. Bare bulb overhead for that gulag effect.

  Was this where people wound up who threatened the president?

  Sever stepped in front of the dangling bulb, his face lost in shadow. My breath caught, but I smoothed out the inhale so it would be less noticeable.

  I said, "You can't kill me. People will know."

  "Kill you? What the hell are you talking about?"

  I said, "Check my sock."

  He tugged out the folded piece of paper from my sock and regarded my bad handwriting. My name is Nick Horrigan. I was brought to San Onofre during the "terrorist" incident last week I did not kill Mack Jackman. I am not a terrorist. I turned myself in to the Secret Service at 725 S Figueroa the night of 9/15. At the time I went in, I had no injuries and was in good health.

  "The fuck's this gonna do for you?" Sever said.

  "I've rented a motel room. With a fax machine that I preprogrammed. If I'm not released from here by midnight, that fax will send."

  "To who?"

  "The L.A. Times, The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News."

  "No one can know you were at San Onofre."

  "That's the least of your concerns."

  "Yeah? So why don't you tell me what my real concerns are?"

  "What else I'm sending in that fax."

  "What else are you sending?"

  "I want to talk to Wydell."

  "You'd rather talk to me."

  "Why would I rather talk to you?"

  He paused, wet his lips. "I'm a better listener."

  "I'll take my chances on Wydell."

  "He's not here."

  "Where is he?"

  "Overseeing the preadvance for the UCLA debate. Believe it or not, as the special agent in charge, he's got other things on his plate. He can't get here. Can't be arranged."

  "You have till midnight to arrange it. Then it won't matter."

  "I may have to recommend a psych eval for you." He studied me. My resolve must have been clear, because he grimaced and said, "I'll see what I can do." At the door he paused. "What makes you think you can trust Wydell?"

  "I never said I trusted him. But I'll talk to him."

  He walked out, setting the dead bolt behind him. I went over to the door, but the interior side had no knob. Not even a metal backing for the dead bolt. The seamless walls left me in a state of near panic. For the first fifteen minutes, I paced the perimeter, skimming my shoulder along the concrete, a hot pain pulsing in the wound on my cheek. At around the half-hour mark, I finally figured out how to step back over the cuffs, bringing my arms in front of me. That relieved the stress in my shoulders, but little else. The recycled air grew dense and moist.

  I was on the hard wooden chair again when Wydell entered, Sever at his back.

  "No," I said. "Just you."

  Wydell nodded at Sever, who sighed and stepped out. Wydell closed the door, then turned to me. The razor-sharp line of his part left not a hair out of place. The knot of his tie was so symmetrical it looked clip-on fake. Sweat spotted his shirt at the crease of his stomach. A long, hot day. He moved toward me, the lightbulb playing off the shadows of that slender nose, bent slightly at the bridge from an ancient break. He stood over me, hands at his sides, too polished to cross his arms, though his impatience was clear.

  His eyes picked me apart. "I saw the note you're threatening to fax. I thought we had an agreement about San Onofre."

  "Things have changed."

  "Yes, you have a lot to answer for."

  "Is Sever the leak?"

  "No. The leak has been plugged."

  "Who was it?"

  "Oh, right. I forgot you had a Level-five clearance."

  "How do I know you 're not the mole?"

  "You don't."

  "So why should I talk to you?"

  "You asked for me, Horrigan, remember? We can put a name and a face to the third terrorist whenever the mood strikes. You're not in a position to play hard to get." Wydell crossed to the door, opened it, and beckoned. He said, across the threshold, "He's determined that we're both dirty, or maybe not."

  Sever came in, looking no more pleased with me. "Maybe Mack Jackman was dirty, too. Maybe that's why you slit his throat."

  "Or maybe Mack Jackman was dead when I got there."

  "Was he?"

  "You tell me."

  Sever looked across at his superior. "What is it with this guy?"

  "You think I did what?" I said. "Slit Jackman's throat, then tried to blow myself up and light myself on fire?"

  "Ignited the munitions dump inside the apartment with a rifle grenade. To destroy evidence."

  I said, "Convenient, that."

  "Not for Mack," Wydell said.

  "What are you talking about?" Sever turned to Wydell. "What is this jackass talking about?"

  Wydell's eyes never left mine. "So," he said. " We killed Mack Jackman. Is that it?"

  I broke off the stare-down.

  "You fled the scene," Wydell pressed on. "Not the decision of an innocent man."

  "After the explosion I wasn't feeling so welcome."

  "Me? " Sever was suddenly irate. "You think / set the fire?" His confusion-and anger-seemed legitimate, that southern accent ramping up with the emotion.

  "You fled the scene," Wydell repeated. "You were doing business with the victim."

  "How do you know that?" I asked. "More pictures from Kim Kendall?"

  "Who's Kim Kendall?" Wydell looked genuinely puzzled. I didn't answer, so he asked, "Why were you-and your homeless buddy-in possession of marked bills?"

  "Why were they marked?" I asked.

  "We don't know. It was in the system. From the top."

  "Right," I said. "From the top. The West Wing keeping an eye on those hundreds, maybe."

  Sever had his back up again. "What are you saying about the president?" Anger hardened his face. "You're just full of comebacks here in private, aren't you? Not like out in the hall in front of other people where you were too t-t-tongue-tied to say your own name."

  Wydell opened the door and reached through. When his hand reappeared, it was holding a Glock in a crime-scene bag. Frank's blood on the handle had gone black with age. "You have a hell of a history, Horrigan, I'll give you that."

  Suddenly sweating in an interrogation room. Again. It felt as though the last seventeen years had been narrowing to this needle-sharp point, waiting to impale me.

  Wydell's face was tight with anger. "This got dropped in our lap from above, and I'm starting to feel a bit like a pawn in a political game. Is that what you're playing? A political game?"

  The gun that had killed Frank swayed in the smudged plastic. I was having a hard time taking my eyes off it. I said, "There's a reason why my prints are on that gun-read the report."

&nbs
p; "So that's a yes?" Wydell handed the bag back to whoever was waiting outside. The door closed with a decisive thump that said the room was soundproofed. "I don't know what channels this piece of evidence moved through to land on my desk the way it did. But let's just say it looks like magic. There's a lot of magic in politics. Evidence appears. People disappear. Like you did once. You really want to play in this sandbox? Because I sure as hell don't."

  Sever's glare hadn't left me. "Have you been in touch with Caruthers?"

  "No."

  "We think you have."

  "Give him a call. Tell him I'm here."

  "Why would we do that?"

  "Maybe he'll want to know."

  "Who the fuck cares?" Sever said. "We don't answer to some senator. We protect him. But our primary charge is protecting the president of the United States."

  "Along with his interests," Wydell added coolly.

  "So get the Man a message. Tell him I have the evidence he's had the Service chasing."

  "What evidence?" Sever asked.

  "The evidence that doesn't exist."

  Wydell said, "And what is this nonexistent evidence?"

  "It's what's going to be faxed to major media outlets in"-I tilted my head to read Wydell's watch-"two hours and fifteen minutes."

  Sever chuckled at me. "It's a shame the president of the United States doesn't have any contacts in the media. I'm sure his forces are helpless against a random fax from an unidentified crank."

  "If you didn't kill Mack Jackman and blow up that apartment," Wydell asked, "why are we playing an extortion game with a fax machine?"

  "So if I get choppered to a covert facility or wind up with my head blown off, at least someone will know."

  "Know what?"

  Sever brushed Wydell aside, an act of insubordination that Wydell seemed to condone under the circumstances. Sever grabbed the arms of my chair, brought his face so close to mine I could smell his sweat. "The system belongs to us. So we'll play this game. I'll see to it that you're charged for murder-Mack Jackman's and Frank Durant's-and get bail set so high you'll sit in your stains until trial."

  I said, "Give Bilton the message."

  Sever grimaced and stood. Wydell stepped forward, blocking that harsh throw of light from the dangling bulb. His hands tensed at his sides. I thought, Here it comes, but instead Wydell just studied me with what seemed like genuine curiosity.